Too nice to be mugged
I was working late one night, and parked my car in the lot behind my apartment building. I'd never had any problems there before, despite it being in the middle of beautiful downtown Hamilton. It was reasonably well lit, and only a few steps from my car to the door, and being around three a.m. on a Wednesday morning, it was deserted. Keep in mind that I was about 21 at the time, and I'm a girl.

Suddenly, a guy dressed in a black trenchcoat, fedora, red shirt, and black tie (I shit you not) popped out of nowhere. I started to run, and he started yelling something at me... "Wait...stop...I need help!" etc. There was really no place to run to (the door would have taken too long to open with my key) so I stopped. He approached, and told me some sob story about how he was an out-of-town businessman and he had lost his carkeys and he was a diabetic and had no way to get home. He asked me for money, and I gave him a few bucks just to get him to go away. I had at least $50 in my wallet, but I pretended that I only had change. I said that if he needed help, my building had a security guard, and I started walking that way. He followed me, and pretended to be interested in finding the guard. Luckily, as I turned the corner onto the street, there were a bunch of people on the sidewalk, and the guy just kind of dissappeared.

I'm pretty sure I came close to being mugged that night, and it rattled me a lot. I bought a parking pass for an underground lot the next day.

Apologies for length and lack of humor, but I wasn't a terribly funny night.
(BlackArmadillo Avoided writing that article on, Sat 17 Jun 2006, 17:01, Reply)